


Fairer Than Death

by lalejandra



Category: Everwood
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Transformative Works Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-17
Updated: 2004-01-17
Packaged: 2019-07-17 14:12:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16097255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.  (--The Princess Bride)





	Fairer Than Death

Everyone is really concerned about Amy. Everyone. And Bright is concerned about Amy, too, but... Well, Amy is sixteen. And it's high time that she stopped letting their father make all her decisions. Bright watched her creep down the hallway, hissed from his bedroom door, handed her fifty dollars -- everything he had in his room. Most of it was crumpled dollar bills and quarters. He reminded her to call him, to tell him that she was all right, and not raped at a gas station in Cincinnati or something, and watched her pull out of the driveway with her lights off.

Everyone is really concerned about Ephram and Madison. Everyone. And Bright is concerned about Ephram and Madison, too, but... Well, Ephram is sixteen, and Madison is twenty-something. And if they want to indulge their hormones and do the wild thang, who cares? Bright thinks it'll be good for Ephram to get his freak on with someone who wasn't Bright's little sister or Bright's best friend. Everyone has to go through an experimenting phase -- Bright just did his a bit earlier than Ephram. He left a box of condoms under Ephram's bed the last time he was at the Browns', and hopes that Ephram is suave and New York enough to remember to use them. The last thing Everwood needed was another pregnancy scandal.

Everyone is really concerned about Bright's Aunt Linda. Everyone. Bright is concerned about Aunt Linda, too, but... Well, Linda is old -- old enough to take care of herself. Old enough to be able to make her own decisions. She should be, anyway. She should have told everyone what was really going on; she should have told Bright what was really going on. Instead he'd had to find out by eavesdropping, which is never the best way to do it. But he could tell something was up, and he needed to know what. He was kind of in shock -- everyone had to die some time, but his aunt was going to die sooner than most. He knew his dad was pissed that she liked Dr. Brown -- liked him in that I-wanna-sex-you-up kind of way, which was gross, but Aunt Linda always went against the rules. Bright wasn't too thrilled about it either, because Dr. Brown could be a real dick, but Bright figured that she should get her kicks while she was still well enough to get them. Instead of worrying about her sex life, he resolved to spend more time with her; he didn't want to look back at 2004 some time in the future and realize that he should have learned more about the people he loved before they died.

Nobody is concerned about Colin anymore, because Colin is dead. Colin. Is. Dead. Bright always thinks the words separately, and then connects them in his head, because sometimes he doesn't remember, and finds himself dialing the Harts' phone number. He always hangs up after the first ring. Even though it's been six months since Colin died, it still doesn't seem real. And nobody really thinks about Laynie, or about Mr. and Mrs. Hart. Bright still does. You never forget your first time, or so he'd heard, so he was prepared for Laynie to be with him in some way forever. And Mr. Hart was going to drink himself to death, and Mrs. Hart was going to pretend everything was all right until she died of a broken heart, and Laynie seemed, on the surface, to be more well-adjusted than ever, which Bright knew meant she was probably more fucked up on the inside than she was when they were kids. But a hurried and sweaty fuck in the back of Bright's truck didn't entitle Bright to pry, and neither did being her dead brother's former best friend. Bright had stopped thinking about the accident in terms of something that was his fault, stopped thinking of himself as Colin's murderer. Because he wasn't -- pre-accident/coma/brain surgery Colin never would have thought so, and Bright wasn't going to think so either. Shit happened. Life moved on. It wasn't fair, but it was fairer than death -- well, living was more fair than dying, anyway.

Nobody is concerned about Bright. Nobody ever is. His dad wants him to be smart, and his mom wants him to be happy, and Amy doesn't see him as a real person. Ephram thinks he's a dumb, happy-go-lucky jock with a sick sense of humor and a stereotypical taste for heterosexual porn -- which he is, to be fair -- and Delia, he guesses, thinks of him as a white knight, armor shining, muscles bulging, smile gleaming. He can't blame her for that, because he does his level best to keep up the illusion for her. The kid has to have dreams, or else Everwood is going to suck the life out of her the way it sucks the life out of everyone else. Illusions are hard to maintain, and nobody knows that better than Bright. Nobody lived in Everwood -- not until the Browns came along and started shaking things up. Nobody was really alive, nobody was really conscious -- and maybe it was better that way. Because at least then, Bright was able to sleep at night, and didn't lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, his mind racing and his heart pounding, so conscious of the world and everyone in it, weighed down by pain and joy alike.

  



End file.
